


Aponi's Grove

by Euphoric_Mania



Category: Original Work, World of Warcraft
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-24
Updated: 2019-11-24
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:41:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21549673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Euphoric_Mania/pseuds/Euphoric_Mania
Summary: I originally set out to start a new rp thread in a group with this character, as others seem to like her and I thought other characters might like to meet her in a different setting, and then it got away from me and became this.No, she's not dead, she is actually just sleeping. But... if she were to die, sometime in the far flung future- she would want to sacrifice herself to create something great and beautiful. Maybe... maybe one day, she does just that to restore the Ghostlands, or to bring life back to the Eastern Plaguelands, or any other places on Azeroth that have suffered terribly.I cannot vouch for how canon this actually is, at least in regards to the magic used, but it just happened, so I rolled with it. I thought it sound lovely, and decided to share. <3Edit to Add: One of my Lore educated friends says Aponi must have called upon the the Spirit of Aessina, so she thought the Lore was pretty spot on. :)
Kudos: 1





	Aponi's Grove

*chop* *chop* *chop* 

The great tree shuddered as the last bit of supporting wood began to give way beneath the orc lumberjacks axe. The man had been sent to fall a tree that had a good straight trunk, in order to be broken down into long beams that wouldn't twist when they dried, and this tree had been the straightest he could find. It had taken him most of the day to cut through its great girth. 

He had completely disregarded the strange decorations that had adorned the mighty bole of this tree. He had looked upon the strings of beads and the odd amulets and indecipherable markings and just thought they were some night elf's silliness, and therefore ignored them. 

He watched as the tree began to twist, and listened to the groaning and creaking of the wood as it began to fall, lined up perfectly just the way he had planned it. With a final shriek of parting wood fibers it dropped, hitting the ground with an earth shaking boom. Birds fled, screeching in alarm, and then everything settled once more into the usual quiet of the forest. Branches snapped behind him, making the orc turn and search for the source. His eyes scanned the undergrowth, but saw nothing, so he shrugged and turned to the task of removing the limbs of the tree, so that it could be cut into lengths and dragged back to the logging camp for processing. 

As he raised his axe to make the first cut, a powerful hand seized his wrist in a frightening grip. He turned, afraid a night elf had found him, but this towering, hulking shape was no elf- it was hooded and horned, covered in a massive heavy cloak that masked the rest of its features. 

"A- a tauren?" he gasped. "You're a long way from home-!" 

From deep within the darkness of the hood, two gleaming eyes lit up in blue, and narrowed into a glare. The tauren seized the axe he held and ripped it from his grasp, flinging it away with a sweep of its arm. 

"Hey-!" 

He watched in horror as roots churned up from the earth and seized the axe, dragging it into the soil beneath it. 

"That was mine! I need that!" 

The tauren seized him by the harness he wore and pushed its face close, shaking with barely contained rage. 

"Run," it whispered savagely. "Run, before I bury you forever," and as it spoke roots began writhing out of the ground near the orc's feet, reaching up, reaching for him. 

"N-no! Wait, no!" 

The Tauren let him go, and the orc fled in panic, desperate to avoid a terrible suffocating death, dragged underground by the angry trees. He would not return. 

Rarely did Aponi anger. 

She had thought she had left the violence and the vengeance long behind her- had thought her temper had cooled as she aged- but now she stood and trembled in her wrath, gazing upon the terrible desecration before her. 

Her people rarely occupied forests now, but the oldest songs spoke of a time when they roamed forest and field alike, sharing space with the other living creatures of the world, living in harmony with nature. 

Long ago her family had died. Her mate, her daughter, her twin sons. Her beautiful family, gone forever, trampled beneath the hooves of marauding centaurs. She had survived, somehow, her memory broken and patchy about many things, but their faces were still clear in her mind. She had spent time among the elves of Ashenvale. They had shown great kindness in sheltering her, and had even invited her to Darnassus, where they helped her to heal and recover from the terrible ordeals she had experienced. 

An open minded priestess had suggested she try to find closure for her family. She knew not where their bodies were- they had probably long gone to dust by that point- but they had not had their last rites, and that deeply bothered her. So the priestess, in her wisdom, had taken her into the forest so many years ago, and told her to reach out, let the spirits guide her to a place that felt right, and they had walked side by side until Aponi's hooves had finally stopped. Before them, as straight and stately as a totem pole, stood a tree. 

The rituals they had performed were an odd mish-mash of Shu'halo and Kaldorei, as the tree that the spirits had chosen was adorned with meaningful things, wrapped in ceremony and witness to the funeral chants, as the tauren druid sang her precious family to their rest, their spirits free to rejoin the Earthmother. Aponi's haunted mind was finally eased.   
And now that sacred tree lay in ruin upon the ground, chopped down out of war driven greed, and Aponi, the sweet, gentle healer many had come to love, was beyond furious. 

She pressed her hands against the trunk and rested her head against it, feeling the tree's spirit as it was dying, fading away. 

"No," she whispered. 

She looked over at the raw stump, still bleeding sap, and she could feel that the roots still lived, but knew that they too would die if nothing was done. 

She stepped back and removed her heavy cloak, setting it aside. She looked less bulky now, an aging old woman gone all to silver, clad in little more than a thin tunic and a skirt that ended just above her hocks. She stood there among the trees, before the fallen giant, and closed her eyes as her hands came up. 

Slowly her hooves moved, tracing the steps of an ancient dance over the soft loam. As her hooves moved, so did her hands, and then her body joined in, seeming to shed all of its collected years as energy began to gather in her movements. As she danced, flowers and grasses grew beneath her feet, and a quiet hum began in her throat, which soon swelled in volume as she gave voice to the words of her song. 

She spoke the old tongue, the story tellers language, the ancient dialect of the long dead teachers of wisdom who had kept her people's memories alive for generations. She spoke to the tree, to the roots in the ground, to the soil that they grew in, to the Earthmother and the Skyfather and the spirits of the ancestors that whispered in the wind, beseeching them, asking for their blessing... and then she threw back her head and uttered the words of power. 

The ground began to move and shift and from the damp soil sprang new saplings, young and lithe, from the roots of their dying parent. Their magic was strong as they reached for the sky, swaying and twisting and growing as if joining her in the dance of life, as her movements became wild and hypnotic. Her open eyes, glowing bright with power, were unseeing, her gaze only for the Dream and the energy she was channeling from it into this world. Her trance was deep as she wove her magic, until at last her movements slowed, and stopped, and she came back into herself to gaze upon her work.

She stood within the center of a new grove, filled with strong young trees and bursting with plants and beauty. The fallen ancient that had represented the resting place of her family for so many years had been received by the Earthmother, and had given rise to new life- a small forest of tree ferns and flowering plants stood where it once lay. 

As the vines and roots reached up to catch her as she fell, Aponi thought... Yes. 

This is how our anger should manifest. We can be angry, but it doesn't mean we need to destroy. We can be angry- and create life. We can be angry- and do great things. We can be angry- and be better for it. 

As the grove laid her upon a bed of soft moss, and wrapped her in a protective cocoon at its center, she closed her eyes to sleep, to recover her strength. Nature sang to her with bird song and the rustle of leaves in the wind. 

The spirits in the breeze blew softly against her cheek, and the trees whispered Yes... this is good.


End file.
